Well after, people wil be too scared to risk it early on!
Id imagine a decade or so into propper colognisation. Real people working and living not just working. And even if the baby was conceived in space, who would stay in space and have it when the likelyhood is Earth will be a day or so away.

Id say 2080 - 2120 and not near Earth, medics would have a lady on the moon or earth orbit sent home. Would have to be Mars area

Limited research already done with baby rats in space shows that they cannot develop normally in zero gravity. So unless we want defective children, births will have to be on a planet with enough gravity. Is 1/6 enough? 1/3? Nobody knows. The consensus guess is 1/3 might be enough but 1/6 is not. So there is no way it will be before 2030. I hesitate to say never, because that includes 10,000 years from now, but it will be way WAY farther in the future than 2030.

Last edited by campbelp2002 on Thu Nov 15, 2007 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No animals have ever been born in space. Some baby rats were sent up with their mothers, but they were born on Earth. And when the baby rats returned they could not even roll over 6 months after returning. They also could not swim, which rats normally do quite well. They never develop normal abilities to move in gravity if they are in zero gravity during the critical develoment phase just after birth.

No animals have ever been born in space. ... They never develop normal abilities to move in gravity if they are in zero gravity during the critical develoment phase just after birth.

Sorry, did you mean just before birth?

No I really did mean AFTER birth. Development does not end at birth. Depending on what animal we are talking about, different abilities develop AFTER birth. Marsupials are born almost totally undeveloped by mammal standards and must complete most of their development in the pouch. Human babies cannot walk when born but deer and other heard animals can. Rats (and cats and dogs too) are born blind and only develop sight after birth. In the experiments I refer to, they launched rats that could already see, but they couldn't walk or swim yet. Upon return to Earth, and for 6 months after that, they could not swim or walk or even roll over on their own. I do not know what happened after 6 months, but 6 months to a rat is probably like 5 or 10 years to a human.

Hi Rob.
I was not aware of the insects born is space before, but of course that is far different from a human or even a rat.

Sorry, my bad. I had 'No animals have ever been born in space' stuck in my head and couldn't see how we knew what effect 0g had just after birth. I completely missed the significance of the middle 3 sentences. The answer was right there in the baby rats going up with their moms. I was not subjected to 0g just after birth, so I have no excuse for this blunder.

No animals have ever been born in space. Some baby rats were sent up with their mothers, but they were born on Earth. And when the baby rats returned they could not even roll over 6 months after returning. They also could not swim, which rats normally do quite well. They never develop normal abilities to move in gravity if they are in zero gravity during the critical develoment phase just after birth.

Of course the 3+ G's they underwent to get to orbit may have been part of the issue too. I wonder if a control group was put through that stress in a centrifuge earthside?